Judging Technical Design

Jack W. – OwlBots Programmer – 8^th  Grade

There are four areas in the FLL competition, one of these areas is technical design.  In this section you are judged on three main areas: Mechanical Design, Programming, and Strategy/Innovation.  Mechanical Design assesses your robot’s durability, mechanical efficiency, and mechanization. Our robot has a large box like frame which reinforces the robot, allows us to square up against walls, makes it easier to mount attachments, and gives it a balanced center of gravity.

Programming assesses the quality and efficiency of the software we designed to make our robot move and sense its environment.   Our robot has two light sensors, allowing us to straddle the black lines and a color sensor to identify uniquely colored areas on the board.  This allows our robot to make small corrections as it travels around the board making it more consistent as well as easier to program.

Finally, we are judged on Strategy and Innovation. We have some very innovative attachments:

• a spring-loaded device that shoots pegs at a ball, the ball then (hopefully) smashes into the bowling pins.
• a Y shaped attachment that squares up on the quilts which corrects for any steering errors.
• a ramp that allows us to climb a set of stairs onto the tilting table so that we do not have to drive to the far end of the board where a ramp already exists.

We have developed a script for the technical judging.  This means we will know ahead of time who will be talking about what missions and what exactly we are going to say.  This way we won’t forget to mention any of our design accomplishments.